Red Ladder Theatre Company presents a darkly funny memoir based on Bernard Hare’s ground-breaking 2005 book Urban Grimshaw and the Shed Crew.
When Chop meets charismatic Urban – an illiterate 12-year-old but with a real talent for words, and a penchant for glue-sniffing and firebombing – he’s brought into the inner-circle of The Shed Crew: a posse of dispossessed kids: runaways and joyriders, seeking sanctuary in a shed from the mean streets of their inner-city estate. When mum’s a junkie, your dad might as well be dead and grown-ups are all nonces, grasses and
greedy-bastards, The Crew is the only family you need.
Award-winning playwright Kevin Fegan has adapted Hare’s searingly honest memoir into an ingenious new play which captures the explosive energy of this extraordinary story. Twenty years on from the events of the book, Red Ladder Theatre Company is
presenting the world premiere staging of this acclaimed work of literature.
Red Ladder’s Artistic Director, Rod Dixon, said: “There have been massive leaps forward and huge changes since Bernard Hare’s book was written, and we’re not looking back to the past in bringing this incredible artwork to the stage. As one of Britain’s leading radical theatre companies this story is one that Red Ladder still needs to tell – as vast sections of society across Britain exist in extreme poverty; forgotten communities living parallel lives in austerity against the glossy veneer of commerce and consumerism. We’re thrilled to have the Albion Electrics warehouse as a venue in which we will immerse people into this world; one from which we can all learn about ‘survival’ and family and the power of humanity and the arts.”
The Shed Crew is at Albion Electric Warehouse, Leeds from 21st September to 1st October 2017. Tickets can be booked through West Yorkshire Playhouse’s Box Office on 0113 213 7700 or online at www.wyp.org.uk.
